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We’ve all seen the videos, from your neighbor to Gwen Stefani dousing themselves in a bucket of ice water to raise money for ALS. And with the success of this grassroots campaign, some are crying foul or, rather, “Slacktivists!”

The idea behind “slacktivism” is that people make a minimal effort for a good cause and feel like they are doing something grand, while all they are really doing is lazily posting a link or promoting their own abs in a wet T-shirt contest parading as charity.

As a writer for a non-profit, I think a lot about the best ways we can motivate people to generosity. I genuinely dislike the term and concept of “slacktivism” for many reasons.

Boaz is that rare man who does things because God is real (Ruth 3:13). So behind and within all of his provision and care for Ruth is the desire to glorify God. We see this even in his expressed motivation upon winning Naomi’s land and Ruth’s hand from the redeemer with first dibs. He says he has purchased them to perpetuate the names of dead relatives. Clearly Boaz is a “worthy man” (Ruth 2:1) and not just in the sense of financial means.

My son may never experience what many young black boys and what most black men inevitably do. He will be treated as a white male. He has a privilege that many biracial children do not have (not being judged by the way he looks) because he looks like a white boy. I find myself constantly in an interesting position. I have a son who is essentially white. He has both a black and white parent, but he looks white. And so I think through a different lens about my children than many of my black brothers and sisters. I wonder what the world will be like for him as a child who could pass as white grappling with the injustice and continual racism against those who look like his mother. But as I’ve watched the outcry of many for the tragic loss of a young man, Michael Brown, I also wonder if my son will feel fearful, isolated, and alone.…

I find myself mourning the loss of a young man I’ve never known, grieving over the police and the looting and the racist undertones of comments found throughout social media, and thanking God that in time he will make all things new. And I’m processing this issue for young black boys and my young white-looking boy.

If the danger of the tyranny of numbers was evident in the 19th century, how much more so is it today? We are in the age of gargantuan numbers, truly instant information, ceaselessly hyperactive social media, when the worldwide web has become a flood-driven Niagara of raw, uninterpreted information and emotion that pounds down on us by the minute with its ceaseless roar and its drenching deluge. Who can hear themselves think, let alone make sense of it all with genuine reflection and seasoned judgments?

No wonder it is tempting to give up and go with the flow, rushing along with the crowds and swept past the best as we chase after the most. It is all too easy to get caught up in the sensational and forget the significant. Those who make this mistake miss the important for the urgent and become attuned to popular approval rather than divine authority. They count opinions rather than weigh them. The imprimatur they covet is to be called “in,” “cool,” “relevant,” or better still, one of “the hundred most influential” or part of a new “emerging majority.” For heaven’s sake, read anything and everything that is “in” at the present moment. But we must pray always and unceasingly that we are never, God forbid, “out of fashion” or fear being caught on “the wrong side of history.”

What should I do when my husband forgets to buy milk on the way home from work? When my kids leave their new bikes out in the rain? When fellow church members are curt or critical on Sunday mornings?

Increasingly, I hear the godly action in these scenarios described as “giving grace.” And, while I wholeheartedly applaud heart-motivations of love, and God-glorifying acts of mercy, words still matter. When I hear Reformed people urging me to give “grace” to others, I question whether this is the right use of that precious word.